Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

Elio was wearing shorts and a shirt marked with one or two stains of varnish, while Sebastiano was in a mechanic’s overall that must have belonged to his father. His hands, after three days of work, were white and unmarked. The weather was mild and the sky covered with flat, inconsistent clouds hinting at the blue behind them.

As they ate, Elio told the story of a man from a nearby village where Leonardo had never been. This man, known to all by the name of Nino Prun, lived in an isolated ruin and several years earlier had bought himself a coffin that he kept in his bedroom. Apart from this eccentricity and a somewhat shabby style of dressing, everyone knew him to be mild, celibate, and reserved.

Two weeks earlier Nino Prun had gone down to the priest’s housekeeper to arrange for the curate to call on him the following day. Although the woman knew that the man had never been a churchgoer, she passed on the message and the next day the priest climbed up to the man’s house in hopes of a late repentance. Instead he had found Nino Prun in his coffin, stiff, washed, combed, and dressed for burial. All the priest had to do was administer benediction and order the lid to be nailed down. The man had left his few belongings on the dresser in two supermarket bags, one marked with the name of a prostitute from C., who by then had no longer worked for a number of years, and the other with the name of the Association of Alpine Mountaineers.

They talked of this and other things just as in earlier years when Elio’s shop had been full of customers, and when it was possible to see people in trains and on benches with one of Leonardo’s books in their hands. Sebastiano shifted his eyes from one to the other as he followed the conversation, but it was as if his silence were concealing thoughts unrelated to what was happening around him. A medieval Japanese poet might have described his figure as combining the strength of a centuries-old tree with the ephemeral wonder of a chrysalis.

“We could try Gallo,” Elio said as they put the dirty plates in the sink.

They lay resting on the veranda floor for half an hour and then loaded the filled baskets on the trailer and set off for the village. Elio took the driving seat while Leonardo and Sebastiano made room for themselves among the baskets. The air was tepid as the light faded and the smell of the grapes caused them a slight dizziness. Bauschan watched the passing countryside from his owner’s arms. Leonardo wished he could travel like this forever.

“Guido, if only you and Lapo and I,” he quoted in a murmur, “could be enchanted and put into a ship with the winds carrying us across the sea to your heart’s content and mine, so that neither destiny nor any other bad weather could impede us, but that on the contrary, united by a common desire, we would feel an ever-increasing need to keep together.”

They passed the carabinieri station. The windows were barred, and crocuses and wild spinach were growing from the steps. It was a year now since the men had been either diverted to the National Guard or transferred to a larger base. The nearest of these was at A., but no one was in a position to say whether there were any carabinieri there anymore, since the Land Rover that used to come every two days and park in the village square was no longer showing up.

When the road divided, they took the route that climbed the hill in gentle curves. The vineyard was at the top of the knoll with its entrance marked by a great red iron gate without any surrounding fence; all around it the vines sloped away like waves in a geometrical sea, to far-off churches and towers still lit by the sun. A clock in the village struck five.

Elio drove the tractor straight into the courtyard. The two-story house, neat as a biscuit, had its laboratory and cellar in an annex. The balconies on the upper floor were luxuriant with geraniums, and apart from some fifty or so cardboard boxes piled in the yard, everything seemed in perfect order.

Elio switched off the motor and headed with Leonardo for the portico, where Cesare Gallo was sitting on a white leather sofa; Sebastiano and the dog stayed in the trailer. Gallo was wearing leather boots and over his shirt collar was one of those leather ties that a hundred years earlier herdsmen on the other side of the world used to put on in honor of the Sunday sermon. Everyone in the district knew that in his basement dining room he kept one of those mechanical bulls that used to be found at fairs.

“Do you want me to laugh?” he said, even before the two men reached the steps. “We only picked our own because the thought of the harvest rotting away broke my heart.”

Elio and Leonardo looked at the yellowing boxes in the middle of the yard: five years earlier they would have been full of bottles that would have been quite inadequate to satisfy constant orders from Russia and the East. A swarm of swifts was circling the yard even though it was not the right season for them.

“Do you know anyone who might want the grapes?” Elio said.

Cesare picked up his glass from the ground and drank. What Leonardo had taken for a cardigan flung on the sofa moved and he realized that it was a gray shorthaired cat.

“If you want a friendly word of advice,” Cesare said, “go to the river and chuck the lot in, then go back home and get drunk like me.”

There was a short silence while each stared at the shoes of the other; then a boy with a large birthmark on his cheek and hair that looked as if it had been cut by someone who had become bored halfway through the job emerged from the shed.

“Allow me to present the last employee of the house of Gallo,” Cesare said.

Leonardo and Elio acknowledged the boy, who responded briefly.

“I’ve turned on the fans,” he told his boss. “Will you take care of turning them off again?”

Cesare nodded. The boy stuck his hands in his pockets and headed for the gate. The green of his overalls seemed to become darker before he vanished among the hedges lining the drive out of the estate. To Leonardo, it was like reading the last page of a South American family saga. A light breeze stirred a couple of lemon trees under the portico. Then Cesare got up and gestured to them to follow him.

The terrace around back was piled with a haphazard collection of furniture, children’s toys, and other objects. It looked as though several rooms had been emptied according to some criterion connected with the size of their contents. Below this, beyond the parapet, the plain extended in regular geometrical shapes defined by the fields and roads that linked the villages. It was a magnificent view. Far off the foothills of the mountains were hidden by a layer of mist that left their summits free.

“Look at the main road to C.,” Cesare said, offering them a small pair of binoculars from his pocket. “That’s how it’s been since this morning.”

Elio looked first, then passed the binoculars to Leonardo who took several seconds to find the road. Both lanes were jammed with a continuous line of motionless vehicles.

“My family left at seven,” Cesare said, “and at midday I could still see them. They’d gone five kilometers, more or less.”

“Are you the only one staying behind?” Elio asked.

Cesare nodded.

“After what happened at C., Rita couldn’t be persuaded. So we loaded the truck last night. They’re headed to our house in Nice.”

“What was it that happened?” Leonardo asked.

“Haven’t you heard? They committed every kind of obscenity and set fire to the village before leaving. This morning Stefano Pellissero ran to see if his sister was all right. He said all you can do is tear your hair out. It’s like war’s passed through.”

“Were they outsiders?” Elio asked.